The emergence of Online Social Networking service which have introduced new paradigms of sharing have changed the way people interact with each other. They provide an easy and creative way to connect with people. As a result there are all kinds of people like working professionals, students, businessmen and many more who participate actively in such networks. Social Networking services are also turning out to be a medium for promoting small scale business, books, events etc. Apart from this there is substantial literature which suggests that social connections can be created, maintained and strengthened through computer mediated channels of communication with special importance being given to the role of internet in maintaining social relations. Thus the social networking services build digital connections among people who are socially connected. Though the users can leverage a host of applications/services like messaging, chatting, file sharing, discussions in groups, activities etc from these online social networking applications, there is no relevance given to the context/location of a user in the existing setup. With the technology moving from personal computers to hand held and intelligent devices with embedded technology and connectivity there is a rise in the development of pervasive computing applications which provide easy access to required information and applications through a class of ubiquitous equipment that operate when and where needed. This adds value to the existing infrastructure by providing services which are “anytime and anywhere”. Social networking applications hold a vast amount of personal data that can be used to improve the experience of users in the physical space. With the changing environment of users and also that of the people in their social network a system with a capability of examining the environment and providing highly personalized services to the user is highly desirable. Thus the work described in this document will project a social networking service that gives significance to the location of a user. In other words we will see how social networking services can migrate from networked personal computers to more ubiquitous hand held devices like PDA’s, Smart Phones which would involve the location information of the physical space in order to make social experiences more meaningful. The primary goals of this work are:- 1.To develop a social network service and deploy it to a select set of users and monitor the level of interaction. 2.Propose an architecture which could be used to implement location awareness in the social network service developed. 3.Develop a prototype and provide a “proof of concept” of the architecture and the system designed. 4.Survey privacy issues that are of great importance in such systems. This work will produce a framework and perception of designing a social networking service that is location aware. The resulting system will be deployed to a set of users’ in order to understand the usage pattern of such systems. This would give a good picture of how such systems would be perceived and compared to the existing online social network services that are insensitive to the change in location of its users.

abstract: The analysis of clinical workflow offers many challenges to clinical stakeholders and researchers, especially in environments characterized by dynamic and concurrent processes. Workflow analysis in such environments is essential for monitoring performance and finding bottlenecks and sources of error. Clinical workflow analysis has been enhanced with the inclusion of modern technologies. One such intervention is automated location tracking which is a system that detects the movement of clinicians and equipment. Utilizing the data produced from automated location tracking technologies can lead to the development of novel workflow analytics that can be used to complement more traditional approaches such as ethnography and grounded-theory based qualitative methods. The goals of this research are to: (i) develop a series of analytic techniques to derive deeper workflow-related insight in an emergency department setting, (ii) overlay data from disparate sources (quantitative and qualitative) to develop strategies that facilitate workflow redesign, and (iii) incorporate visual analytics methods to improve the targeted visual feedback received by providers based on the findings. The overarching purpose is to create a framework to demonstrate the utility of automated location tracking data used in conjunction with clinical data like EHR logs and its vital role in the future of clinical workflow analysis/analytics. This document is categorized based on two primary aims of the research. The first aim deals with the use of automated location tracking data to develop a novel methodological/exploratory framework for clinical workflow. The second aim is to overlay the quantitative data generated from the previous aim on data from qualitative observation and shadowing studies (mixed methods) to develop a deeper view of clinical workflow that can be used to facilitate workflow redesign. The final sections of the document speculate on the direction of this work where the potential of this research in the creation of fully integrated clinical environments i.e. environments with state-of-the-art location tracking and other data collection mechanisms, is discussed. The main purpose of this research is to demonstrate ways by which clinical processes can be continuously monitored allowing for proactive adaptations in the face of technological and process changes to minimize any negative impact on the quality of patient care and provider satisfaction. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Biomedical Informatics 2018

Exploiting context-aware environments, where sensors scattered in a environment update presence servers to indicate the environmental changes can be used to enable new services. Such systems have become feasible both in terms of technical di±culties and their cost. A current focus in this area of research is how a context-aware system should be designed so that it reduces both the cost and complexity of the infrastructure, but still provides the desired services. One of the key components of many context-aware systems is location sensing, because a user's location is one of the most used elements of information in context-aware services. In this paper, we address cost e®ective location services by utilizing measurements of WLAN signal strength. We derive from these measurements an estimate of a device's location, and make this location information available via a SIP Presence User Agent, thus making location information readily available to services that might wish to use this information - while hiding details of how this information is acquired from these services. / Genom att utnyttja kontextmedvetna miljöer, där sensorer i en miljö uppdaterar närvarande servrar med information omändringar i omgivningen, så kan man öppna upp vägar för nya tjänster. Sådana system har blivit utförbara bade när det gäller tekniska svarigheter och deras kostnader. Inom forskning som rör sådana här system ägnas mycket uppmärksamhetåt hur en kontextmedveten miljö borde designas för att minimera både kostnaden och komplexiteten av infrastrukturen, men fortfarande tillhandahålla den önskade tjänsten. En av huvudkomponenterna i många kontextmedvetna system är platsuppfattning, eftersom en användares position är en av de mest använda elementen av information i kontextmedvetna tjänster. I den här uppsatsen ägnar vi oss åt kostnadseffektiva platstjänster genom att mäta signalstyrkan av ett WLAN. Genom dessa mätningar uppskattar vi en enhets position och gör denna information tillgänglig via en SIP Presence User Agent, och gör på så vis platsinformationen tillgänglig för tjänster som kan vilja ha den { utan att avslöja detaljer om hur informationen har skaffats.

Ubiquitous location-aware systems and services are becoming a reality as made evident by the widely known Global Position System (GPS). However, indoor location-aware sensing systems are not yet commercially viable since: (i) for a GPS-based system, the signals attenuate and can multipath indoors causing weak signal and poor location (ii) for a Radiolocation-based system, the propagation of radio signals are complex and difficult to model. In this paper, we present RadLoco, a location-sensing system that uses IEEE 802.11 Wireless LAN survey techniques to create a radio Received Signal Strength (RSS) map of the propagation environment. To provide accurate location estimation, we make use of a kernel-window estimation algorithm that is used to approximate the probability density function of RSS measurement and location. Unlike parametric estimators, this non-parametric kernel approach requires less knowledge of the distributions of location and measurements, and also makes use of the prior knowledge of mobile terminal location to reduce the estimation error. The novelty of the system is an innovative radio/ultrasonic sensory network which allows for rapid data collection whereas the standard technique of defining a grid of survey points with measuring rulers, chalk, and tape would require a great amount of manpower. Using this sensory network, a 2000m sq. office building is surveyed in four hours by a single technician. Our experimental results indicate the mobile terminal is located on the correct oor with over 98% accuracy and with a mean error of less than 2.5m from the true location.

Cognitive radio is a recent novel approach for the realization of intelligent and sophisticated wireless systems. Although the research and development on cognitive radio is still in the stage of infancy, there are significant interests and efforts towards realization of cognitive radio. Cognitive radio systems are envisioned to support context awareness and related systems. The context can be spectrum, environment, location, waveform, power and other radio resources. Significant amount of the studies related to cognitive radio in the literature focuses on the spectrum awareness since it is one of the most crucial features of cognitive radio systems. However, the rest of the features of cognitive radio such as location and environment awareness have not been investigated thoroughly. For instance, location aware systems are widespread and the demand for more advanced ones are growing. Therefore, the main objective of this dissertation is to develop an underlying location awareness architecture for cognitive radio systems, which is described as location awareness engine, in order to support goal driven and autonomous location aware systems. A cognitive radio conceptual model with location awareness engine and cycle is developed by inspiring from the location awareness features of human being and bat echolocation systems. Additionally, the functionalities of the engine are identified and presented. Upon providing the functionalities of location awareness engine, the focus is given to the development of cognitive positioning systems. Furthermore, range accuracy adaptation, which is a cognitive behavior of bats, is developed for cognitive positioning systems. In what follows, two main approaches are investigated in order to improve the performance of range accuracy adaptation method. The first approach is based on idea of improving the spectrum availability through hybrid underlay and overlay dynamic spectrum access method. On the other hand, the second approach emphasizes on spectrum utilization, where we study performance of range accuracy adaptation from both theoretical and practical perspectives considering whole spectrum utilization approach. Furthermore, we introduced a new spectrum utilization technique that is referred as dispersed spectrum utilization. The performance analysis of dispersed spectrum utilization approach is studied considering time delay estimation problem in cognitive positioning systems. Afterward, the performance of whole and dispersed spectrum utilization approaches are compared in the context of cognitive positioning systems. Finally, some representative advanced location aware systems for cognitive radio networks are presented in order to demonstrate some potential applications of the proposed location awareness engine in cognitive radio systems.